8. Eight
Chapter 8
In his book Casting the Barrier , located on the bottom left of Eudoria’s shelves, Azterin, former head of the Temple Order, described the Ward like a great sieve that filtered out magic. I was inclined to agree with him. Three hundred and twenty- seven years of air and rain and wind and dust had passed from one side to the other, while magic caught and clung and built a sediment along the huge, arcing shell.
Three hundred and twenty-seven years of magic thickening like pond scum, a choking, heavy layer of power that blurred the heavens above. Three hundred and twenty-seven years of the Ward of Tarelay, the world’s greatest enchantment, the one that never failed, never wavered, never broke.
Until it did.
A tidal wave of raw power dropped from the sky and crashed through every sigil in the Protectorate. To my right Kalcedon’s bean sprouts, braided into the sigil for growth, shot up ten feet higher. Heat unlike anything I’d ever felt crushed me from all sides.
And in front of the outdoor oven, Eudoria’s simple fire sigil exploded. The blaze was immense and catastrophic.
It swallowed her in an instant.
There was no time to react, except to jump up, drop my journal, and fall over the bench. I scrambled back to my feet, so startled I couldn’t wrap my mind around what happened. First Eudoria had been standing next to the stone oven and the stack of firewood. Then it was gone, all of it—Eudoria, the basket of kindling. The olive tree beside us was in flames. The inferno gnawed at the corner of the bench where I had sat a half-second before. My journal crumbled into ash.
“Eudoria!” I shrieked. For an idiotic, confused moment I thought she’d chosen to do it, and couldn’t understand why. My throat burned with the smoke and my eyes smarted from the intensity of the light. I screamed again and choked on the sound. Stumbling back, I threw my hand up to cover my face.
A shield. A rune for protection. Something. Anything . Eudoria was in the fire, and I had to save her.
But the heat of the outland magic was so thick my mind spasmed. Why couldn’t I remember any spells? I knew spells. I ground my knuckles against my jaw as my galloping mind stumbled. Magic was everywhere, heavy in the air, a thousand times hotter than Kalcedon. It pressed so tightly against me my thoughts sputtered out each time they tried to start. My body screamed with power.
Water, I kept thinking. Water. The sigil for water. Smoke filled my lungs and I gasped for air, fingers trembling with unspent magic. The inferno in front of me consumed all in its path, roaring closer and closer towards me. I was going to burn. Water. The sigil for water.
The door to the tower rammed open as Kalcedon burst outside.
“Get back,” he yelled as he raced past me. His graceful fingers etched sigils into the air, sigils that shimmered with magic, expanded, and evaporated.
The fire was gone.
I cried out and turned away, stomach heaving at the sight of Eudoria’s charred corpse. I could hear Kalcedon moving around, his breath heavy. I could feel the weight of the magic in the air now. I still had no recognition for what it meant. I ground my knuckles harder against my chin, desperate to bring my mind back to order.
My legs wobbled. Slowly I lowered myself into a crouch, thighs resting on my calves, chin resting on my knees. The air smelled like smoke, and like burnt meat. I coughed, and rubbed at my eyes.
“Is she alright?” I choked out, unable to comprehend the meaning of the body, the meaning of the smell. On some level I knew without question what had happened. But part of me thought, foolishly, that if I asked I might get another answer. Kalcedon might tell me that everything was fine, that he was going to fix it. “Is… is she…”
“Gone,” Kalcedon said.
Dead. And I had done nothing to help her.
I didn’t get up, but I did manage to look over my shoulder. Kalcedon stood at the edge of a great blackened circle. There was no smoke, no fire. He had ended it all. The olive tree still smoldered, wisps of smoke rising into the sky.
He turned over his shoulder, too, and stared back at me. His lips were pressed together hard, his shoulders stiff. His dark hair splayed messily across his forehead.
“How?” Kalcedon said, his voice a trembling rumble.
“I don’t know. She…” I finally started to straighten up, but found my legs giving out again. I took a breath as I fell back into a crouch. I couldn’t stop shaking. “She was adding to the fire, and… she just…” My voice sounded different, distant. Like it was someone else’s.
I studiously looked at Kalcedon, my eyes catching on his sharp nose and high cheeks. I couldn’t look away. I might see Eudoria’s body again if I looked away.
“I couldn’t think.” I finally looked away from him, down at my hands. I was mumbling now, my words barely formed. “I don’t even… it was such a simple spell. How could she… how could the Ward…”
I looked back from my outstretched palms to Kalcedon’s face. His lips looked pale. I hadn’t had a moment to process what the flood of power meant, not when Eudoria was burning right in front of my eyes.
He combed his fingers through his hair, pushing it back out of his face. But he didn’t answer me.
In the gray sky above us, I caught a flicker of power as the Ward surged back into place, protecting us once more from the horrors beyond. But the heavy layers of magic stayed like fog in the air. Hundreds of years of power weighed down on me, warm and wild and not comforting in the least. Grief dulled the answering roar of my blood.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. I heard a rush like the ocean in my head, an obliterating buzz that wouldn’t quiet. “It happened so fast…”
“I wished for it,” he whispered hoarsely, and looked down at his trembling hands. “I wished I could know how it felt, all this heat. And…”
“You didn’t wish this .”
He lifted a hand to one eye and pressed his finger there. He sniffed hard as his face contorted, mouth curling horribly down at the edges.
“What do we do now?” I asked. Kalcedon didn’t answer. But I needed somebody to tell me. “What should we—? What now? Kalcedon?”
He turned and stumbled towards Eudoria. He fell on his knees before her remains, head bowed, shoulders shaking. I heard a horrible, strained sob escape his lips. I’d never seen Kalcedon like that before. I didn’t know Kalcedon could do that.
I turned and fled to the safety of the house.